Molgrips – if you supply a service to someone and they pay you for it they presumably paid because it was useful to them. Let's suppose it saved them a lot of time, which they then used more productively. Everyone ends up better off.

by definition those makign money have to take it from someone else

That's not true. It's not a zero sum game.

Why isn't TJ up in arms about this system being imposed on the English?

On the one hand, I'm not keen on the database state.

On the other hand, it makes sense to have an electronic medical record. Your details are recorded on computer each time you go to the hospital or visit your GP anyway.

Which tyres for quantum physics?

It doesn't change from a wave to a particle, it IS a wave and a particle.

I'd be tempted to say it's neither and they are just our rubbish attempts to explain something that seems odd to us.

r979 – the 'wave' is really the distribution of probability that a particle (photon) might turn out to be in a particular place when it interacts with something. The 'particle' aspect is just our explanation of the fact that the energy travels in discrete packets of a particular amount of energy (you can't get less and if you have more it is always a multiple).

Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

;-)

You can also just BUY the drugs you need, if you want, in the UK. So there's the price on your wife's 9 months of life – the cost of the drugs.

Now this is bit is where the NHS goes wrong. As soon as you buy some drugs the NHS will no longer pay for any treatment for that 'episode of care'.

This is wrong, and needs changing ASAP.

…and even if we did massively increase taxes and NHS spending, you'll still have the same problem, since the amount of money available is not infinite. There'd always be something that was too expensive.

Except this is the misleading thing about "Death Panels" (as NICE has been referred to by various hyperbolics): insurance companies in the US will also cut off funding for certain drugs and treatments when there's no point any more, just like NICE will recommend to trusts.

konabunny – that point is so obvious that it shouldn't need pointing out…!

I suppose if the 'death panels' are insurance companies it must be ok.

You wouldn't expect anything written by Roy Hattersley to be right would you?

aP – I don't disagree with you, but I do think something has gone wrong in our culture and we can't see that we can improve things. The optimism that we had in the Victorian era, or in the 50s and 60s has gone. NIMBYism, vested interests, conservation, environmentalism – there are always reasons not to build things, and a lack of belief that something new could be better than what's there now, and that change can be good.

+1 for the M62 – it's a thing of beauty.

It's such a shame that we've lost the confidence to build things in this country now.

When Denmark, Norway and Iceland can have rich economies

Iceland?

Not the best example to choose…

feet and metres; different.

even NASA get confused, don't worry.

Pook's at it now as well! ;-)

I'm perfectly happy with PlusNet (well I am now I've moved to the cheaper tariff that they neglected to tell me about previously).

It's important to remember that the insurance companies aren't charities and they should be perfectly entitled to decline coverage in certain circumstances.

It's important to remember that regulation can force providers to cross subsidise some less profitable activities with other, more profitable activities. As long as all providers operate within the same regulatory framework, it's still a competitive market in which providers can make a profit, just one that better serves the community as a whole.

The above is true whether talking about public transport, television, insurance, etc. etc.

Healthcare insurance is a necessity a new tv is not …. Much like folk here whining about flood damage and no insurance…..standing infront of 40 inch plasmas …..there are excepions and i accept that – and provision does need to be made for that but a full nhs system is not a forward step,

There was never any question of the US adopting an NHS type model. Obama's reforms are basically aimed at ensuring that people do take out private insurance (and stopping insurers from not insuring ill people).

I've ridden this path evenings and weekends and no-one's ever tried to stop me. Mind you, if there are any walkers I'm liable to stop and wait for them – mostly because I need a clear run to have any chance of doing the tricky bits and an audience isn't what I want!

Good to see that peak park rangers are so familiar with OS maps that they need to check the key…

Do you find those books in the history section of the bookshop now?

So I should be reading what to be uber current?

Last – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

Now – The Cloudspotter's Guide (but if it doesn't grab me I'll go back to re-reading Walking on Glass by Iain Banks)

Also several books on Objective-C and C# but they don't count.

aracer – the point is that it isn't a laptop sans keyboard. It's a different thing.

Everyone has had an ipad in virtually every science fiction film and now its here – what's not to like ;-)

Seriously though, if you can't imagine schools making use of them, or doctors having patient notes on them, architects showing clients plans on them, etc. then surely that's just because you can't imagine things not being just like they are now?

'Only' 16GB? So what, data lives elsewhere. Quite possibly the processing power lives elsewhere too and you need to think of the ipad as a client device.

Who needs a 'proper' computer anyway?

Don't have a Chicken Jalfrezi the night before.

The railway viaduct in Stockport that the M60 passes under:

Mersey viaduct[/url]

spag bol

ianpinder – if the ipad takes off, it will help kill off flash – which will be a good thing.

And why on earth would anyone want to run more than one app at a time? I can't do that on my PS3 and it's never seemed a limitation.

But this is just a local story isn't it? Here's the URL in full:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8577612.stm

See the /london/ bit?

Scotland exports electricity to England as well.

And politicians…

Obviously if Scotland decides to throw its money at different things to the rest of the UK that's for Scotland to decide, as long as they can afford it (arguments about whether they receive a disproportionate amount of funding to begin with are a separate thing). And I thought the reason most hospitals give for charing for parking is so that the car parks aren't full all day preventing people getting in (good old 'demand management' again).

However:

according to a report in the paper today, 41 % of students at Edinburgh are from England

The point here is that the English students at Scottish universities are paying more for their tuition than their Scottish classmates.

Agree with others – university should be free for anyone clever enough to go there – the current mania for sending everyone there if they can afford it even if they are as thick as mince is nuts.

I hereby predict that half the haters will have an ipad (or something very similar) within a year or two.

My son, now a man, had gaming equipment from an early age and as a result, never really took to reading, which for me is massively important in a youngster's development.

My son, now a teenage PITA, had PS1, PS2, GameCube, Wii, XBox, GameBoy Color, Gameboy Advanced, Nintendo DS and iPod Touch, and on average reads at least a book a week, usually two.

I don't see the case for mutual exclusivity.

Apple TV will do what you want I think, but not the cheapest option. That acer looks interesting.

If you just want to be able to view stuff from a memory stick you might find that some TVs have a USB port nowadays.

There are allotments at the end of my road. The buggers are constantly lighting bonfires to burn the crap they just grew and smoke wafts down the street because they can't be bothered to take account of weather conditions. I'd be much happier if someone built apartments there instead.

(Does this make me a little Englander or not TJ?)

9 points is the premier league rule, 10 points the football league rule. Less games per season in the premier league is the reason, which is fair enough.

Why so much fuss about Portsmouth all of a sudden when plenty of clubs have been docked points for going into administration before? It's been a rule for 10 years now for good reason.

Personally I think you should be thrown out of the league completely, that might concentrate some minds.

It's so flat I get vertigo every time I go there, it feels like you might fall off the planet if you don't keep hold of something.

The government doesn't have any green policies, just green sounding excuses for other policies.

Try to get an amicable agreement and avoid the CSA at all costs. It would be worth offering slightly over their calculator figure just to not have to deal with them.

For example, they spent nearly a year threatening me with court proceedings to get 2 years back maintainence when I had already paid the money to my ex directly – all because she signed on briefly between jobs. Basically they wanted me to stop paying her and start paying them – even though that would have made her worse off. They are useless tards of the highest quality.

Edit: I was actually paying more direct to my ex than CSA said I should be, still didn't stop them coming after me. Unbeleivable.

This thread contains worrying amounts of common sense.

Move along, STWers, nothing to see here.